Jeremie Granat is introducing The Panda Project. You can read the original announcement on the JudgeApps forums.

The Panda project is a diversity project focused on publishing articles featuring judges and players from minority groups to show the difficulties they had or still have from their own point of view.

Most people in Magic, be that judges, players or tournament organizers cannot empathize with people that are not like them, be it because of their different background, gender identity (or lack thereof), color or sexual preferences.

The problem is not that they don’t want to but rather that, as they have never experienced the things some minorities are subjected to every day, they have no frame of reference and thus, can’t really grasp the problems a small joke or comment might generate.

The goal of this project is to find judges, players and tournament organizers from minority groups who are willing to tell us their stories about how they live their lives in the magic communities, the problems they faced and/or are still facing and what they would like the community to adopt from their point of view. The Panda Project would then create a recurring publication featuring one person in regular intervals.

The general idea is not to enforce a change in behavior but to generate awareness of what others are facing and what they have to overcome. Of course, The Panda Project hopes the articles will generate mutual understanding and bring a change in behavior but we are not here to enforce anything, just to improve awareness.

The Panda Project is looking for interviewers who are highly empathic to situations outside their own personal experiences as well as writers who will be able to stay true to the message the interviewee tried to express. The Panda Project might also be looking for translators to create copies in local languages for a higher reach degree.

Current goal:

• Create a temporary team to create a more detailed and concrete vision of the project (will later be split in the different groups).
• Create a team of interviewers who understand the goal of the project and know what questions to ask to help readers understand what the interviewees felt and are confronted with.
• Create a team of writers that will take the interview answers and generate a “Try this for size Monthly” article.
• Create a team of writers that will generate guides and recommendations for minority groups as well as for TOs and judges.
• Assign the leadership of the publication to 1-2 person to coordinate the publishing dates and the interaction with the Social Media & Web Development Sphere.

Please contact Jeremie Granat if you would like to be part of this project.